by Richard Peck
She saved the day by saying to Mother, “If Lucille ain’t comin’ down, Mrs. Armsworth, I’m not wrastlin’ a tray up to her room.”
I couldn’t see Dad for the newspaper over his face. He had it folded lengthwise and was drinking coffee on the other side of it. I could tell how his high collar was grabbing at his throat from the sound of gulping when he swallowed.
Right about then, Lucille charged into the dining room, looking a little baggy-eyed. “I’m here,” she sang out to the kitchen door.
And from the other side Gladys yelled, “You better be.”
“Hello, Brother dear,” Lucille said to me and whipped up all the hair on my head as she slid her sizable bottom into a chair.
“Lemme alone,” I greeted her.
“Lucille,” Mother said, working her rings, “when will you stop hollering from room to room at the servant?”
The servant came through the door with Lucille’s chops and eggs and wished out loud that certain people would refer to her as the hired girl instead of a servant because out in the country where we all of us originated, hired help wasn’t called servants.
Mother let that pass but set on Lucille again. “I fell into a fitful sleep last night before I heard the front door lock behind you and on a school night too. If Tom Hackett can’t see you home at a reasonable hour, I’m very much afraid there are going to have to be some rules set down.” She looked toward the folded newspaper, “by your father.” Dad is deaf when he gets behind his newspaper, which in this instance could have meant agreement.
“I guess if Tom Hackett isn’t doing right, you’d rather see me stepping out with—ah—Bub Timmons,” Lucille said, very pert.
“Don’t talk so absurd,” Mother said. “Bub Timmons is no more than fourteen years old.”
“And trash,” Lucille added.
At the mention of Bub, Dad glanced around his newspaper, trying to decipher how the Timmonses had come into the conversation. But he ducked back when Lucille continued. “What if I was to break it off with Tom?” Lucille said to Mother. “Then how’d you feel? You been grooming me for Tom and the Hackett money since I was younger than this squirt here.” Lucille waved a knife in my direction.
“Don’t talk so vulgar,” Mother said, glancing over her shoulder at the kitchen door. “And put down your knife when you’re using your fork.”
I heard a horse stomping gravel and glanced behind me out the bay window. There was Uncle Miles Armsworth, eighty-five years old and straight as a plumb line. He was tying his horse, Nelly Melba, up to the porch post. His big box of carpentry tools was fixed onto the back of his buggy. So I knew we were in for an interruption before Lucille and Mother could get each other by the short hairs.
Pretty soon the front door banged back, and Uncle Miles bellowed down the hall, “ANYBODY TO HOME?”
“Oh dear Lord, not this early,” Mother sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“I better be off to school,” said Lucille.
“Fold your napkin,” Mother told her.
“Come on in, Uncle Miles!” Dad said, turning so he wouldn’t have to look at Mother.
Lucille was beating a hasty retreat, but she said to Mother, “Be sure to tell Uncle Miles what we want him to build for my party.”
“First things first,” Mother said. “I want him to get started on the porch today. You know how difficult he is.”
Then Uncle Miles was standing in the doorway grinning toothless like he just tagged us all out in a turn at hide-and-seek.
“Still settin’ to your breakfast!” he boomed. “I had mine at 5:30!”
Uncle Miles was an original kind of old codger and a sore trial to Mother. Dad would have put him on the payroll at the business, which is house construction. But Uncle Miles was an independent type carpenter. He took on the work he wanted to and worked a ten-hour day. Then he’d lay off for a week to fish Snake Creek or travel. Taking so many odd jobs all over town kept him modem, he always said.
Cousin Elvera Schumate said his way with wood was as admired as his tongue was feared. She would say this much on his behalf even if she is from Mother’s side of the family.
“Come on in, Uncle Miles, and take a—” Dad caught a glimpse of Mother before he could ask him to sit down. But Gladys slammed through from the kitchen and advanced on him with a beaming face and a cup of coffee.
“Say, Gladys, if I’d a-knowed I’d see you, I’d a-put my teeth in.” Uncle Miles fumbled around in his overall pocket and pulled out a full set of false choppers. They grinned out of his fist at Gladys, who whooped a big laugh. Mother shaded her eyes with her hand.
“That will do, Gladys,” she moaned.
“Oh hark at that, Gladys?” said Uncle Miles. “Back to the kitchen while you’re still an honest woman. But stay single for me. I’m just a-gettin’ into my prime!” Gladys whooped again and vanished.
“Well, Uncle Miles, how you feeling?” Dad said.
“Better’n you look, Joe. You gettin’ to look more and more like a pinch-faced banker right along. Settin’ at a desk when you’d be better workin’ construction in the great out-of-doors. Ain’t you laid up enough money yet to suit—”
“Uncle Miles!” Mother said, half out of her chair and her mind, “I want you to remove some of the scrollwork from off the front porch and start thinking about a balustrade for the piazza.”
“For the pi—what, Luella?” Uncle Miles turned his spectacles on Mother in surprise.
“For the piazza, Uncle Miles. But first I want you to saw off some of those geegaws and gimcracks from the porch entrance. All of that jigsaw ornamentation is passing out of fashion.”
“Hark at who’s tellin’ who what’s passin’ out of fashion,” Uncle Miles said to the ceiling. “You better get a plasterer in here, Luella. Your wall’s crackin’ above the plate rail.”
Mother glanced up toward the ceiling without meaning to. “Never mind that, Uncle Miles. What I want you to do is—”
“To rebuild this here house that old Captain Campbell built in eighteen-hunnert and sixty-one to last a thousand years. And you want it rebuilt this morning with a key-hole saw, that about it?”
“All I want,” Mother tried to explain, “is—”
“Course without the gingerbread, this house is goin’ to look pretty near naked. It was meant to have steamboat trim and without it, the place’ll look a lot like a grain elevator.”
Dad snorted.
“Don’t you start, Joe,” Uncle Miles said with a twinkle sparkling in his eye. “Your company knocks together four overpriced houses a week for poor saps as will pay three thousand dollars for ’em, but I don’t notice you livin’ in one.” He turned suddenly on Mother. “How about Grecian columns to support the porch roof, Luella?”
“Why—”
“Hacketts have Grecian columns on their porch.”
“Do they?” Mother said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“You would if you was invited there. But then the Hacketts has a lot of things other folks don’t.” Since Uncle Miles hadn’t been asked to sit, he kept walking around the dining-room table holding his coffee cup very dainty. A big ball-peen hammer was swinging on his hip.
“Of course, I knowed the Hacketts when,” he said, circling around behind my chair.
“When?” I asked him.
“Why hello there, Alexander!” he boomed right into my ear. “Why I knowed the Hacketts when they was workin’ out of a single drug store in an alley off the square. Not even a paved alley. They was rollin’ their patent medicine pills one at a time when I knowed ’em. But now ain’t they high and mighty and already goin’ to seed! And all because of their big factory turnin’ out—”
“Pharmaceuticals,” Mother said in desperation.
“Laxatives!” Uncle Miles said in triumph.
“Got the runs? Got the ills?
Try a packet of Hackett’s pills!”
Uncle Miles bent double when he’d told his verse, and I was fixing to bust. “Ale
xander, as you’re finished with your breakfast, be off,” Mother said.
“So will I,” Dad said. And in a quiet voice he remarked, “Do your best with the front porch, Uncle Miles.”
“How’s that, Joe? Oh yes. I’ll strip off anything I see with woodworm or dry rot. But don’t count on comin’ home to any Roman temple. Nelly Melba and I may lay off in the middle of the afternoon and go out to Snake Creek to see if the croppy is bitin’. After all, you can’t do but so much when a house begins to pass out of fashion.” He gave us all a wicked gum-grin and the three of us crowded out of the dining room, leaving Mother slumped in her chair.
Chapter Five
Dad enjoys an Antonio y Cleopatra cigar every morning and concentrates on it in the open air. No smoking allowed at home. We walked along part way together. “Your great-uncle Miles is a fine old feller. I hope I’m out and about at his age,” Dad said finally, sounding pensive.
“He kind of sticks in Mother’s craw,” I observed.
“Who don’t?” remarked Dad. “Everybody has their different ways. But remember this, Alexander—Uncle Miles is known as an honest man if he is a plain speaker. And he’ll give an honest day’s work, though not even your mother could overwork him. Lord, I don’t know what she’s got up her sleeve for Lucille’s party. You in on any of that yet?”
“Not me.”
“Well, anyway, Uncle Miles is a man who’s lived just the way he’s wanted to. Can’t many say that. I can’t.”
It was time for me to cut off in the direction of school. But I watched Dad walking away down Eldorado Street to his office, not hurrying because his shoes were tight. He didn’t walk as upright as Uncle Miles, who has forty years on him.
The bell went before I was in the schoolyard. So I had to cut along in order to be at my desk before Miss Winkler started counting noses.
In the light of day, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the state of mind the barn had put me in the night before. And that reminded me I’d forgotten to take breakfast to Trixie. With all this, it nearly slipped my mind I had a score to settle with Blossom Culp. I sat a few seats behind Blossom, but I could see her spider legs hooked behind her.
Most of the girls pull their hair back in big shiny ribbons, plaid or solid colors. But Blossom’s was tied back with a length of string. She was a sorry sight, but clean.
“The monitor for row three is ... ah ... Alexander Armsworth!” Miss Winkler announced.
I hate being monitor, but I guess Miss Winkler thinks everybody has to take a turn. “Front and center, Alexander! And hands out for inspection!” Miss Winkler is no-nonsense about inspections. She looks over the monitor. Then the monitor looks over his row. Everybody has to be in order before we can go on to the Pledge of Allegiance and “The Star Spangled Banner.”
“There are dingy halfmoons of soil beneath your fingernails, Alexander. A fine example for a monitor. Did you not have a good wash this morning?”
“No, ma’am. Lucille was in the bathroom for quite a time.”
“Hmmm. Well, Alexander,” she said quite loud, “when you cannot get into the bathroom to practice good hygiene, then go outdoors and wash under the pump.”
We don’t have anything as old-time as a pump, but it seemed showy to tell Miss Winkler that. And useless. I did have a clean handkerchief which she unfolded. And a pocket comb. So I got two out of three. I started down the row. Les Dawson’s hands were filthy. But I didn’t let on since he made a fist and shook it at me under the desk. When I came to Blossom, she put out her hands until every one of her finger tips touched mine. I drew back, and she drew forward. Girls don’t have to have pocket combs, but they need to have fresh handkerchiefs, same as the boys. “Handkerchief?” I asked her.
She looked troubled and started reaching down and exploring inside the front of her middy blouse, though I knew she didn’t have anything down there. But I took this as an opportunity.
“So just what were you up to last night?” I whispered at her.
“You seen something?” she said with surprise all over her face.
“I saw what you put there so I’d think I was seeing the Unseen,” I mentioned in a somewhat confused way.
Blossom looked blank.
“I found that wet dog up there which you penned in the barn.”
“I never been in that barn in my life and wouldn’t go,” she said out loud, which caused Miss Winkler to approach on my unprotected rear.
“You been up there twice to my certain knowledge,” I hissed at her. “Once to plant that dog and late last night burning candles. Just to make me think I’m seeing—”
Blossom looked scared. That’s the last I noticed of her before Miss Winkler’s hand fell on my shoulder.
“This is not the social hour, Alexander!” This brought on a laugh from the class who don’t socialize with Blossom at any time. “What is the nature of this unnecessary conversation?”
“She doesn’t have her handkerchief,” I betrayed.
“I see,” said Miss Winkler. “But is that any reason for you to be holding hands with her?” How that had happened I don’t know, but I jerked my hands away. “Blossom, have a clean handkerchief tomorrow or else. And if there is more raucous laughter in this class we will all be here till five o’clock. Work your row, Alexander.”
So that’s how it came to pass that I walked Blossom home for the second day running. But I thought it was my duty to because burning candles in the barn could set it afire and the Mercer with it, not to mention Trixie. Which I told Blossom in strong terms.
“Why, you even know my room looks out on the barn,” I told her.
“I don’t stand in your yard looking up at the windows. I don’t go no place at night.”
I argued with her all the way home. And now I know why. Because if it wasn’t Blossom’s doings, then maybe I was receptive and actually could see things other people can’t. I decided to march Blossom up to the loft and confront her with the evidence, meaning Trixie and probably tallow drippings from the candle.
But Blossom set her brakes when she heard where we were going. “I don’t mess with the Spirit World,” she said. But I had her by the upper arm, marching her across our lawn. Uncle Miles wasn’t in sight, but some of the wood gingerbread was off the porch and scattered like bones around the yard.
“Listen, Alexander, I don’t want to go up in the barn. My mama wouldn’t like it. She’d say some things is better left untampered with. She’d—”
“Your mama talks a lot,” I said and gritted my teeth to show determination. When I threw back the barn doors, Blossom, really dug in her heels. “No, I ain’t going in,” she said, closing those big eyes and shaking her head. “Besides, it ain’t right, going up a haymow with a boy. I ain’t like Lucille. ”
Now that really made me mad. I pushed Blossom ahead of me up the loft steps. But she snaked around, and I ended up dragging her. We both fell against the door and finished in a heap by Mother’s old dress form. Seemed like I was forever falling down with Blossom’s arms around me.
“Ohhhh,” she said, “I don’t like it up here. Where’s that dog?”
I called Trixie and looked all over for her. I even went through the trunks. The coffee can of water and last night’s hambone were there, looking untouched. Her orange crate had an unslept-in look. I was set on finding that dog, though. Blossom wandered around the room, keeping her eye on the door.
“Why’s it so wet up here?” she asked presently. The place did look damper than before. There was green slime and puddles. “It’s like swamp water,” Blossom said and stopped exploring.
I went on looking for a while even when I knew Trixie was gone. But my eyes were stinging and moist. And the only cover for that is rage. “Dad-rat you, Blossom Culp! Bringing a dog in here and then taking her away. That’s a mean thing to do. I wanted to keep her!” Then I hiccupped, and a tear rolled down my cheek.
“Alexander,” she said, soft and straight, “I never been up here in my life, and tha
t’s the truth.”
“What about that time you claimed you were a Siamese twin?” I yelled. “Was that the truth too?”
“No,” she said, looking at the floor behind me. “That was when ... that was different. Alexander, let’s go right now.”
“What’s the hurry?” I didn’t know what to think, and I needed time. Blossom may not have any powers, but she’s not bad at persuasion.
“Alexander,” she said, “I’m begging you. Let’s go.” She was looking past me, and that made me turn around.
There on the floor behind me was a footprint. A perfect shape of a foot, including the toes—a girl’s probably. Black with water and green with slime. I whirled around to see if Blossom had her shoes and stockings on. She did.
I turned back to the footprint which had soaked into the softwood floor but kept its shape.
“How’d you get your shoe and stocking off and back on without me seeing?” I barked in a jumpy voice. But when I tried to confront Blossom, she was gone. I heard her shoes banging down the steps.
And I followed without delay.
Chapter Six
Lucille was having a coming-out party. She wanted to have it before her class had their graduation picnic, so nobody would confuse the two events. As it turned out, nobody did.
It seems like that whole month of May was given over to getting ready for it. It wasn’t slated to be any everyday kind of party. I was passing the time keeping clear of both the barn and Blossom. I gave up hoping to see Trixie again.
But Uncle Miles and I both got drawn into the party preparations, though neither one of us cared much for the work. A coming-out party, as far as I could determine, was supposed to launch a girl into polite society by putting her on display. Mother and Lucille talked a good deal about launchings and coming outs when they weren’t arguing with each other. It pretty much had me stumped. Because if Lucille kept up with Tom Hackett on the porch settee much longer, she’d be so far out she’d never get back.